New Yorkers are now offering their Pokemon Go services on Craigslist, for money

This level 15 Pokemon Go master is for hire, and is not messing around. Photo via Craigslist

Pokemon Go-themed bar crawls are popping up all across the city like a sickness, Twitter is inflamed with screenshots of the little virtual buggers, and now poke hustlers have taken to Craigslist, hoping to make a buck from their Pokemon Go related services. Oh Pokemon Go, when will you go away? It’s only Tuesday, and there are already enough fed-up bystanders that someone developed a Chrome extension called Poke Gone to block Pokemon chatter from our feeds.

Here’s what we found offered on Craigslist so far:

A “professional Pokemon Go trainer,” pictured above, a 24 year-old NYU grad who also describes herself as a “well-employed freelance journalist…who may or may not write an article about this in the future” is charging $20/hour to walk around the East Village in one to four hour shifts while logged into users’ accounts, capturing every Pokemon she sees, activating all the Poke stops, and hatching as many eggs as she can.

She points to a Vice article she claims was written about her and her obsession as evidence that she’s “actually a human being,” but really, it’s about the tattoo artist who ostensibly inked the Golbat on her, and only includes the above picture, so, we’re not actually convinced that she’s not some sort of augmented reality poke bot herself.

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A Pokemon Go party bus for the deluded masses. Photo via Craigslist

A 24/7 Pokemon bus with “enough room to catch them all” is charging for rides throughout Astoria to Pokemon Go players, at 99 cents per pokestop and $99 to “own the hood.” Oh, and $8.99 for tacos, which, unless that’s a Pokemon Go term I’m not familiar with, I suppose refers to the delicious filled tortilla item. This guy knows that Pokemon Go can really work up an appetite! If you’re younger than 18 years old, you’ve got to provide written consent that you can be out past 1130pm. It’s safe to say any minor ought to stay away.

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There’s also a level 14 rando offering to “play for you while you’re at work,” for $8/hour around Union Square. He needs to up his game—no picture, and an all-caps suspect promise “I WILL NOT STEAL YOUR PHONE!” is not going to cut it in this increasingly competitive market!

We expect to see more services cropping up like this; let us know in the comments if you employ any of these virtual masterminds, or if you hear of any others!